Mount Whitney
Serene, Ray, Mark, and I day hiked Mount Whitney on Saturday 8th October 2005. We spent Thursday night at the Cottonwood trailhead (10000 feet) and Friday night at Whitney Portal (8400 feet) to acclimitize, and started our hike at 0415 hrs on Saturday. It had stormed on the mountain two weeks earlier and the trail was completely snowed in from about 12000 feet to 13700 feet. Since that section is a north facing slope, the trail was icy throughout the day. We'd brought traction devices for our shoes for the icy sections and most hikers who didn't turned back. I was a little surprised to see a few hikers continue up the trail without any traction devices, especially since a man had died a week earlier on one of the icy sections when he tried to glissade down because he was too afraid to walk down the icy sections without any crampons. We fortunately had good weather on the day, with the winds dying down just as we left Trail Camp to hike up the icy switchbacks.
